What is the Lesotho Highlands Water Project ?
What is the Lesotho Highlands Water Project ?
The Lesotho Highlands Water Project is a massive concept designed to fully exploit the wet season rains in the mountains of Lesotho and redirect them to Johannesburg. The Project involves 5 major dams, 200 kilometres of tunnels and a 72 megawatt hydro electricity station which will provide Lesotho with an alternative to imported electricity.
The entire scheme is costed at $US8 billion. Most of the money is being raised within South Africa with a large part coming from a levy on existing water users. The rest is being raised from international development banks and aid funds with the World Bank acting as the main broker and monitoring the environmental and social impacts.
The Project had its origins in a deal between the former Apartheid regime in South Africa and a puppet military Government in Lesotho which seized power in 1986. At the time Namibia was a colony of South Africa and the project was strongly opposed by the independence movements in each country. However the new democratic Governments of all three countries have endorsed the Project as originally conceived - Lesotho because of the revenue stream it will receive and South Africa because of the need to bring water to the shanty towns of Johannesburg.
The most immediate impact of the Project is the need to relocate villages and to provide alternative food sources for a significant number of households. The villagers are being moved up the hillsides into grazing land and the fertile land on the valley floors is being inundated. Social and health problems have arisen because of 20,000 itinerant construction workers squatting in the area.
Description of the Lesotho water project by the International
Rivers Network.
Background and environmental impacts of the project.
A report published on March 27, 1996, by the Christian
Council of Churches in Lesotho and Christian Aid - Trust in Construction?
- urges the giant Lesotho Highlands Water Project to offer land near to
the project to people who will be displaced.
The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is working with
the International Rivers Network and non-governmental organizations in
Lesotho, South Africa, and Europe to pressure the WorldBank to address
the problems the project has already caused--including the loss of livelihood
of about 20,000 of Lesotho's poorest inhabitants--before it funds any further
work on the dam.
the International Rivers Network (IRN) is working
with a network of organizations in Southern Africa, Europe and North America
to apply pressure on funding agencies to address unresolved problems caused
by the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.
Promises Versus Reality on the Lesotho Highlands
Water Project
FAO statistics on water in Lesotho
Search AltaVista
for more links.
HoriZons
of Winter 1997
Pages by South Africa's Department of Water Affairs
and Forestry on the Lesotho Watre Project.
(Please be aware of the numerous broken links on
the referred page)
DWAF
on Lesotho project
Lesotho
HWP Background Info
LESOTHO
WATER
Lesotho
Dam compensation at risk by Christian Aid
Huge
Project Will Overwhelm Tiny African Nation
IRN
World Rivers Review November 1995
From
Here to Eternity
lesotho.htm
Last modified on 22 February 1998
reactions and comments please to: Wim
Klunne.
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since 22 February 1998
